


The Ocean Will Have Us All

by Vulgarweed



Series: Neither Side Created Kink Memes [3]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Historical, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, healing cock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 01:17:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley is very un-demonic in the aftermath of a disaster at sea. But at least he claims salvage rights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ocean Will Have Us All

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Good Omens Kink Meme, January 26 2009.
> 
>  **Prompt:** _I would like a hurt/comfort fic, and obviously eventual pairing is good but not really graphic sex, with Aziraphale the one being hurt and comforted. It's always fun to see how people will make Crowley comforting and yet stay in character. If this could somehow involve water that'd be awesome. <3_
> 
> Title comes from "Barracuda" by John Cale.

Sinking. That was completely counterintuitive to what Crowley had always thought one ought to do in the sea, but he was doing just that, and rather frantically. Diving? No, it wasn't quite that graceful. The dilemma he wrestled with was that he was a better swimmer as a serpent, but the water was far too cold for a reptilian form. 

It wouldn't do anyone any good to get them both...dis...

_Don't even think about that. Just plunge._

There was wreckage in the water - a truly worrying amount of boiler parts and scrap metal and ladies' clothing and fine china. There was oil and blood - Crowley could smell it - and there was terror, which Crowley could smell even more strongly.

_You can swim, you bloody bullheaded..._

There'd be time to ask himself later why he was doing such a boneheadedly heroic thing, and time enough to rationalise it into perfectly respectable self-interest. In fact his mind, remarkably well-suited to those exercises, was doing just that as he went down and down and down. 

_The others will mercifully freeze soon enough. Wind up wherever they're supposed to wind up. But if this one forgets himself and allows himself to lose another body when he doesn't have to, then..._

Oh, for fuck's sake. That blessed priest had leaked holy water as he'd gone. Nasty, toxic spill that made Crowley wince as he could barely avoid it, diluted as it was. 

There was a deeper disturbance of holiness, and Crowley just hoped the fool creature hadn't got himself trapped on a lower deck. 

He hadn't. Aziraphale was weakly treading water down in the depths, oblivious to the fact that his mortal body should have died in several different, unpleasant ways many long minutes ago. Crowley reached out and grasped wet tweed, his hands tangling in floating hair, and hauled with all his strength, upward. 

Being an occult creature, laws of physics were to him mere strong recommendations, and as he kicked upwards through the icy water dragging a sodden, stunned and useless angel out of the vortex of the shipwreck, he needed no oxygen and he barely felt the pressure of the water outside his aether. He only felt the pressure inside, which was a sharp, weeping relief he didn't want to dwell on, and a foaming rage he really did want to dwell on, because it kept him warm. 

"Why didn't you get a boat, you idiot?!?" he burbled, the bubbles from his mouth full of sulfur. 

"Women and children first," came the flat answer. 

"You can be a woman if you have to," Crowley snarled. "Why'd you go down with it? Don't get yourself discorporated for a wine list!" 

The answering bubbles came full of words Crowley didn't like. 

"For fuck's sake, Aziraphale, why didn't you get them to stop playing those fucking hymns and do something useful?" 

"Like what?" came the answer, flat and resigned. 

Crowley decided to save his strength for more eloquent berating when he could be better heard, and reached for the surface and its stingy and hostile dawn. 

"Won't notice two more," he muttered to himself, making sure they wouldn't, as he did something only a little arcane as he lifted himself and the angel free of the sea's choppy, ice-wracked depths. Scrotum-tightening sea indeed. His hair was stiff with ice. He bent one numb hand in a complicated gesture to thin their weight, send some spare molecules elsewhere til they had need of them again, because Someone knows he was afraid of the state of his wings. With a grunting profanity, he hauled the uncooperative Aziraphale up onto the deck of the waiting rescue ship. 

_***_

"Crowley..." Aziraphale croaked, taking stock of his surroundings much later. "This is a first-class cabin, isn't it?" 

The demon sitting by his side on the bunk just shrugged as if to say 'of course,' and plucked disdainfully at the linens. All tinny bravado, he said, "I would have said the _Carpathia_ is passe, but I suppose floating never goes out of style. Compared to the alternative." 

"We can't be found here!" 

"We won't be. We can't fly back just yet. Our wings would still be wet. And frozen. And you--" Crowley cut himself off abruptly. "You've not been well." 

"Where are we?" 

"Almost to New York." 

"How long has it been?" 

"Two days." 

"And I've been--?" 

Aziraphale took a closer study of the room. Hot water in the pitcher. Hot brandy in a cup that Crowley kept feeding him compulsively. Wet towels, sodden clothing, and tangled sheets. 

"Feverish," said Crowley quietly. "Delirious. Babbling." 

Aziraphale fell self-conscious and silent. Despite Crowley's best efforts, occult and otherwise, a chill still shivered him throughout. 

"Angel," said Crowley. "When was the last time you saw so many of them die at once?' 

He couldn't remember. He wouldn't remember. All he could say was, "And to no purpose this time." 

Crowley laughed, a harsh bark. "No. Can't say there was. Even your people wouldn't send an iceberg on a crusade. Though some of your knights back in the day were no brighter." 

All Aziraphale could do was shake, and with an almost angry cooing sound--no easy feat--Crowley pulled a rough wool blanket up about his shoulders and crawled underneath. From the way the demon's slim body fit the mattress, Aziraphale judged he been there before, just not wrapped quite so tightly. Aziraphale gave a little squeak when Crowley's limber legs trapped his own. He was naked. They both were. And Crowley was warm, so very warm, his skin so smooth and his contours fitting so neatly against Aziraphale's back. 

"Crowley," he whispered. 

"Ssshhh," said Crowley. "Ssalvage rightss." His breath was hot at the nape of Aziraphale's neck, warming his hair (ice had turned it brittle in the sea), warming his blood (threatening to still it for good, for this incarnation), and waking his nerves (nearly shut down). What was warm about Crowley could have had a breath of brimstone, a bit of a very hot place, but Aziraphale smelled no such thing. Crowley's hand was actually cool on his brow as it brushed hair aside, and he thought he was indeed feverish, which was difficult to believe, and the heat within him made his limbs languid and his veins overheated--everywhere. 

Aziraphale's skin was so fearfully sensitive, and Crowley's hands were so wonderfully full of life, and everywhere they touched him he began to feel renewed and awake again, and eager for the heat of the vital force. Aziraphale squirmed as serpentinely as he himself could manage, reaching for contact with every inch of himself; the front of Crowley's thighs pressed tight to the back of his own, and something very alive and insistent cradled in the cool flesh of his rear, and he gave out a sound that Crowley echoed, throaty and grateful. 

A skillful hand, only slightly shaking, slid over his hip and took firm grasp of him _there._

Sharp teeth held his neck in place for the flickering caress of a tongue--that may even have been forked--and was very thorough and hungry. 

If Aziraphale had been fully himself he might have found a way out of it, but part of him was still dragging the awarenesses of those who died cold and stiff and would never move in this dance again; of children who would never know it. He knew Crowley would pass it off as seduction, but what he was doing, as Aziraphale moaned assent and opened up for him, was most definitely _exorcism._ Aziraphale found himself bucking wildly, biting the pillow, reaching back to command Crowley's hip with a clenching hand. 

"Mmmm," said Crowley, after stormy releases had wracked them and left them washed on a sleepy shore. 

"I'll hate New York," Aziraphale fretted. "And there'll be survivors. Families." 

"Taverns. Restaurants. Good hotels with better beds," murmured Crowley. 

"Want. Home," Aziraphale said, fading into sleep. 

"You mean...?" 

"London, silly." 

"Mm. Good. No ships. We'll fly. Long way up from the sea." 

"Thank you." 

"Don't." 


End file.
